


No One There

by orphan_account



Category: Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
Genre: Angst, F/M, Ficlet, Goodbyes, Hobbits, Male Protagonist, POV Male Character, POV Third Person, Past Tense, The Shire, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-05-04
Updated: 2002-05-04
Packaged: 2017-10-09 07:13:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Bring-your-own-subtext Sam/Frodo.</p><p>This is a songfic, actually, for Sentenced's song by the same name.</p>
    </blockquote>





	No One There

**Author's Note:**

> Bring-your-own-subtext Sam/Frodo.
> 
> This is a songfic, actually, for Sentenced's song by the same name.

Samwise Gamgee stood by the door of Bag End and watched his grown children go down the descending road towards their own hobbit-holes. The night obscured them soon enough, but as long as old Sam could hear their voices, laughing and chatting, he stayed to listen.

"We'll move in with you again," Tom, his youngest, had said. "Any one of us would. You don't have to stay here all alone, Dad." There was a certain appeal to that. Sam had used every excuse in the book, except for the truth. The truth would worry them too much.

The truth was he needed to mourn, he needed to feel the pain of Rosie's passing. He needed to feel more alone than he ever had before, to make it easier what he was going to do next.

It was a good life he had lived, with nary a what-if in it, but it wasn't quite complete yet. If he became the granddad and great-granddad sitting in the corner of his family's house telling stories of old adventures to children, warming his bones by the fire, and be buried next to Rosie, it would seem as if he had had it all. He would have, if there wasn't one more line left hanging.

"Oh, Mr. Frodo, how wrong you were," he sighed as he thought these things. The older Sam got, the more he carried conversations with himself; indeed, he did it all the time now. Sam closed the door and turned back into the dimly lit hole. "I was complete for long times, I was, when I forgot all but the bustle of this life. All in all I was as happy as any hobbit can be. You were right about that." He wandered to the fireplace, above which he kept a wooden box, beautifully engraved with the picture of a sword cutting through spider-web. He took it and sat on the soft chair by the dying fire. He looked at it sadly without opening it.

"Whole? I guess I couldn't have been that either way. You were off to seas with the elves and so you had to be, I know; and I with my roots and heart stuck here, and with family to boot." He opened the box and looked inside. It was his box of heirlooms: the elven rope, the chainmail given him by the King, the box that had held lady Galadriel's gift. He had once even found a bottle that looked exactly like the one that held the light of Eärendil, and added that into the box as a memory, if not a genuine heirloom.

He closed the box. "My hammer and nails, and axe and hands, they're the tools that served me longer than these," he said, and put the box back on the mantelpiece. "Why Mr. Frodo, I've had two lives, haven't I? And I must say that the latter one has been the better one, I'm sorry, but life is much better without Dark Lords and Orcs, that's all I'm saying!"

He started pacing the room. "I only knew you for the smaller part of my life. It is just that I never forgot you, Mr. Frodo." He stopped pacing, and stared at the wall. The decision was tugging at his mind, but he wasn't ready to make it yet. It was getting so late, too. He sighed, and went looking for his bed-clothes.  
Yet as soon as he lay down on his bed he knew he would not sleep for hours yet, if at all.

It was dark as Mordor in the bedroom, with the night foggy and overcast and the curtains drawn. He felt like reaching out in the dark to find Rosie next to him on the bed, and he wanted so badly to pull her to him, to cling to her warmth, but Rosie wouldn't be there. There was no-one there beside him now. He felt as lost and desperate as if he was indeed back in Mordor and had suddenly woken up to find Mr. Frodo gone.

It freezed his heart, and he wept, and old hobbit alone in his bed, nothing and no-one left, the children and relatives and friends all centuries away, faceless and distant now that his wife was dead.

***

The blue morning breeze met him at the gate. Below him, Hobbiton slumbered, the mists of the night still wrapping tendrils over the grounds. His heart was filled to the brim with love. He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry," he said. Then he opened the gate, and set his foot on the road.

 

He knew now that last night he had already said good-bye to Tom and Elanor and Goldilocks and Faramir and Frodo Junior and everyone else. He had been preparing, and known even then what he would do. He'd just needed to convince himself.

 

"We all die alone, they say," he said to himself as he walked towards the main road and from there to the west, towards the sea. "But Rosie didn't, and her Sam's not going to. I don't suppose I'll ever see Mr. Frodo again, but it will be enough to sit by his grave for a while, supposing the elves take me." But he felt, as long as he would smell the salt of sea, he would not die alone. He only needed to breathe the same air Frodo had, one more time. To be whole.


End file.
